In manufacturing organizations, the pursuit of efficiency and operational excellence is a constant. For decades, the focus has often been on machines, data, and processes, but another perspective is transforming how companies achieve their goals.
This approach recognizes that the most powerful tool on the factory floor isn’t a piece of equipment, but the people who operate it.
To elaborate on this topic, we spoke with Reeve Southam, who has served in a variety of positions within manufacturing organizations over his career, with roles centered around process improvement, innovation, talent management, and learning. Right now, he is the Director of Talent Management and Training at Doosan Bobcat. With a BA in History from Brigham Young University and a Masters of Organization Development from Bowling Green State University, Reeve shares his perspective on operational excellence on the Accelerating Operational Performance podcast. You can listen to the full episode here or watch it here.
Reeve and Greg discuss a human-centered approach to optimizing manufacturing processes. They look at why this mindset is crucial for modern manufacturing, how to overcome common leadership pitfalls, and what it takes to build a high-performing and engaged team.
What is a Human-Centered Approach to Optimizing Manufacturing Processes?
A leader’s personal journey often shapes their approach to process improvement. For Reeve, this journey was a series of pivots and adjustments that led him away from his childhood dream of being a fighter pilot and toward a career in organizational development. He discovered his strengths were in systems thinking and understanding human behavior, which ultimately guided him to his master’s program at Bowling Green State University in the heart of automotive manufacturing country. This background instilled in him a deep understanding of the human element within a manufacturing environment.
Early in his career, Reeve admits he fell into the common trap of viewing himself as the sole expert on the floor. During a Lean implementation project, he and his team spent three days struggling to solve a line-balancing problem. Despite applying all the principles they had been taught, they were frustrated and about to turn in a null result.
A significant moment occurred when a line lead, who knew every position on the line, walked up and solved the problem in just ten minutes. This experience was a humbling awakening that changed Reeve’s foundational understanding of leadership. It solidified his belief that “the people who are experts are the ones doing this work”.
This lesson became a cornerstone of his human-centered approach to optimizing manufacturing processes, realizing that a leader’s job is to go and see the reality of the floor before prescribing a solution. By inviting input from the workers who do the job every day, a leader can uncover insights that can lead to improvements and significant cost savings. For example, by inviting line workers to review a new product assembly line, he found that their feedback led to a redesign that saved millions of dollars and resulted in a successful product launch.
The Role of Learning and Development (L&D) in Human-Centered Process Optimization
“A manager’s role is to consistently remove ambiguity and create greater certainty and clarification of expectations.”
In a human-centered approach to optimizing manufacturing processes, L&D professionals play a strategic role that goes beyond just conducting workshops. An L&D leader’s primary responsibility is to be a business person first and a training professional second. This strategic perspective allows L&D to create significant value by deeply understanding the business, its needs, and its goals.
A core function of L&D is to help employees see the bigger picture and how their daily work contributes to the company’s goals. By giving learners the context of who the customer is and how the organization adds value, L&D empowers them to have a greater impact. This ensures that every team member, from a plant leader to a welder, understands their role in the overall system.
L&D also plays a large role in simplifying complex processes for employees. When teaching new tools or procedures, L&D professionals should tell the story behind them, which provides the context necessary for people to apply what they’ve learned effectively. These L&D leaders must advocate for clear roles and responsibilities within the organization. This removes ambiguity, which, as Reeve notes, is a primary job of a manager, and provides the certainty that people need to apply their skills with confidence.
“And so I really see that as the role of learning and development is to clarify those questions for people so that we take away the uncertainty to the application of what they’ve learned.”
Building a High-Performing Team Through a Human-Centered Approach
How to Assess High-Potential Talent
Assessing talent is an important component of a human-centered approach to optimizing manufacturing processes. To effectively identify high-potential employees, leaders must look beyond a person’s performance in their current role. Reeve explains that a holistic view of the person is necessary to ensure they are a good fit for future opportunities. This approach can be visualized as a Venn diagram with three key elements that must intersect:
- Aptitude: This is the person’s ability to do the job and their potential to continue to grow. It asks whether they have the skills and capacity to meet new challenges.
- Engagement: This refers to an employee’s desire to be a part of the business and their excitement about showing up to work each day. An engaged employee is an invested employee.
- Aspiration: This is the desire to take on a higher or more challenging role. An individual’s aspiration is the internal motivation that drives them toward future opportunities.
The danger lies in promoting people who lack one of these key elements. For example, if an employee has high aptitude and aspiration but lacks engagement, they are likely to leave, and you are effectively training a future leader for a competitor. Conversely, if a person has high aptitude and engagement but no aspiration, they may be perfectly happy and productive in their current role, with no desire to move up. In the case of aspiration and engagement without aptitude, you risk promoting an individual beyond their level of competence, a situation known as the Peter Principle.
The Importance of Company Culture
The term “culture” often gets a bad reputation as being a “squishy term” that is secondary to hard, data-driven operational tasks. However, Reeve points out, culture is a reality that exists whether we like it or not, and leaders have a significant role in influencing what it becomes. Ignoring the human side of the operation is a mistake because people are the inputs to getting products out the door. The culture must accommodate these “soft, squishy things” (humans) that work in a hard-data environment.
“Culture doesn’t exist without people. So we have to understand what do we need our people to do, how do we need to treat them, and then influence in that way.”
A positive culture directly impacts an operation’s ability to succeed. It’s the unwritten rules of what it takes to fit in and how the team works together to achieve goals. Leaders must be just as skilled at interacting with people as they are at reading financials, maintaining equipment, or planning capacity.
Nurturing a positive culture requires leaders to ensure their people feel engaged and valued. This is an ongoing process of shaping and moving the culture, not just reaching a static destination. By focusing on these human-centered elements, leaders can build a resilient, evolving culture that drives the entire manufacturing process forward.
Avoiding Common Pitfalls in Process Optimization
Even with a human-centered approach, a process optimization initiative can fail without the proper structure. Reeve shared a powerful case of the “death of teams” at a former employer, where a multi-million dollar investment in self-directed work teams failed due to a lack of structure. Power was given to employees to direct their own work, but without clear guidelines on how to use that power, people became immobilized by fear and by ambiguity. This highlights that a leader’s primary job is to remove ambiguity and provide clarity, especially when empowering their team.
Another critical pitfall we need to mention is a failure to measure the impact of an initiative. Reeve makes a great point by saying, “If you have trouble measuring something, you should question whether you are doing the right thing in the first place.” While there may be intangible benefits to L&D and other human-centered initiatives, leaders are stewards of business resources and must show a tangible return on their investments. Relying solely on the notion of intangible benefits can be a form of complicity when better metrics could prove the true value of your efforts.
Optimizing a process successfully means looking at the big picture. It’s about seeing how a change affects everything, giving people the right support to thrive, and being brave enough to measure what happens to show how valuable a human-focused way of improving manufacturing processes truly is.
The Future of Manufacturing is Human-Centered
The future of manufacturing lies not just in technological advancement but in a profound shift toward a human-centered approach. The most significant gains in efficiency, innovation, and engagement often come from the insights of the people on the frontlines. As leaders, our role is to embrace humility and understand that the true experts are the ones doing the work every day.
Adopting this mindset means prioritizing people leadership over being the best technical operator. This involves building a strong culture, assessing talent holistically based on aptitude, engagement, and aspiration, and actively seeking team input on process improvements. By providing clear structure, removing ambiguity, and coaching our teams, we enable their success and, in turn, our own.
A human-centered approach to optimizing manufacturing processes is more than a trend; it’s a strategic imperative. It’s about recognizing that investing in people through structured training and consistent feedback is not an intangible benefit but a measurable return that drives the entire organization forward. The most successful operations will be the ones that understand and nurture this vital connection between people and process.
If this approach resonates with you and your organization, but you are unsure where to start—reach out to us at uniquedevelopment.com. We’d love to have a conversation with you about how we can support your team’s needs.
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